One goal in this new age of remote aerial imagery is to provide farmers with field and crop status information as often as desired enabling more frequent and more accurate prescription adjustments to reduce input costs, protect yields and allow for accurate yield estimates throughout the growing season. RoboFlight is a team with over 30 years of remote sensing and precision agricultural expertise using GPS referenced aerial imagery into actionable information. Dr. Deon van der Merwe is a Kansas State University professor with a sense of history. "The use of drones has matured in the last couple of years because of the maturation of the technology that is necessary to make these systems work. 10 years ago, a person trying to do this would have had to basically come up with a lot of solutions from how to fly an airplane to how to get data from the sensors on the airplane. They would have to reinvent the wheel day after day after day and pay very high prices for the technology that was available at that time. Since then, most of the big issues that prevented people from making practical use of this technology has been solved. With the technology associated with the aircraft themselves out to flying the airplanes with an autopilot in a manner that is robust and safe and reliable enough that you can do it day after day at a price that you can afford. The other part of it is in the sense or development. Cameras have come a long way in the last 10 years.
